Our Approach

I know of intersex people that have passed, but it's not good that now I can't name them when I'm sitting and thinking. That disturbs my soul. — Interview with an intersex activist in her 20s, 2025

We're here so that other intersexuals can find us—for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a life altering, even life saving experience. — Max Beck, 1996

Why This Project

It wasn't until the internet that intersex people had any frequent contact with each other. Medical control and shame kept people from knowing the truth about their bodies. In the 1960s and 1970s families and doctors often lied to the early generations, telling them they had "cancer," or telling them nothing at all.

The lies were considered protective. Operating on a child's unique genital anatomy, or forcing medication to suppress "the wrong" hormones or jumpstart a normative puberty, all without disclosure or discussion of long-term implications, were actions that carried an assumed kindness. Consent mattered less than the idea that a child could be made "normal."

Intersex variations are randomly distributed across race, class, and location, though some run in families. We, the creators of this project, have spent a combined 25 years working within intersex communities. The patterns are astounding. Many intersex teens and adults, still, have never met another face-to-face. Even those who are out as transgender, finding in person community and culture around that experience, don't discuss their intersex anatomy for fear of being misunderstood. We as a people lack connection and infrastructure. Intersex connection has always happened through distributed networks first.

Often, when any intersex work happens in one place, it's because one or two people decided to do something, rallying their non-intersex friends around them. This is also how many of the intersex movement's big moments have begun. The positive is, making change might take less people than you would think.

We keep our focus within 1996-2026 because we needed a place to start, and because these are the movement's active, formative years. Intersex people have lived in every society, but the intersex movement as we discuss it began in response to medical practices that began in the United States and Europe in the 1950s. Many scholars, including Jules Gill Peterson and Elizabeth Reis, who is a supporter of this project, have done great work looking at historical events in earlier periods. 1996 was the first documented public demonstration by intersex people against the practice of childhood genital surgeries. And many know the story of that year in Boston.

What less people know are the shapes and patterns in this young movement's 30 years. Unless you are blessed to have direct contact with elders, you may not know about previous organizing. As we spoke to young intersex people across the U.S., their ideas sounded familiar. We, or other elders, could recognize repeating ideas, from different states and decades. We had seen reactions from hostile legal and medical decision makers. We had seen the toll that different tactics took on relationships and well-being. We needed to bring that collective knowledge to the present.

This project began, and it continues, with a simple idea: root intersex people in their legacy, regardless of their income or location.

Methods and Oral Interviews

Hermaphrodites Fight! is a digital project documenting thirty years of resistance to a medical model that pathologizes intersex embodiment. We work with three different components: art, secondary research, and data generated from our own oral interviews with activists.  

We treat our interview data as confidential and anonymous, but since this is not a qualitative research study, we did not seek Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval. Our goal is to interview 30-40 U.S.-based intersex activists with an age distribution representing three different bands of time in the movement: 1996-2006, 2006-2016, and 2016-2026.  

Each participant is chosen because of their public work or is recommended by another participant, which is consistent with snowball sampling. In 1981, Biernacki and Waldorf described snowball sampling as a method that “yields a study sample through referrals made among people who share or know of others who possess some characteristics that are of research interest.” Because of a continued level of shame, stigma, and ignorance surrounding intersex variations, recruiting through networks finds people dedicated to speaking openly on these topics.  

We send interviewees demographic collection and consent forms, which offer information about the project and how their information may be used. Interviews last from 45 to 70 minutes. Transcripts are anonymized and uploaded to an encrypted online storage platform, remaining the property of SLIM.  

Site Credits

This site was created and written by the Strategy Lab for Intersex Movements (SLIM): Dr. Sean Saifa Wall and Hans Lindahl. The project launched in 2026 to celebrate the 30th Intersex Awareness Day.

It takes a village to make a website. We have many people to thank, including:

• Illustrator Alex Aldrich Barrett
• Drupal consultant Dima Storozhuk, iTech4Web
• Fundraising mentor Leslie Minot
• Writing volunteer Aubrey Lay